6. Bruce Lee Kills A Guy With A Saw - The Big Boss
The Big Boss (aka Fists Of Fury) is a Lo Wei directed martial arts film from Hong Kong, starring Bruce Lee. The film is about a group of ice factory workers who start to strike against their employer after a few of their friends and fellow co-workers go missing without explanation. It turns out that the management has made them "disappear" after they became privy to the fact that the ice factory is just a front for a drug-running operation. When a gang of thugs is hired to violently suppress the workers' movement, the newest employee, Cheng Chao-an (Bruce Lee), makes it his personal mission to figure out what has happened to his friends. Even if it kills him. The film has a beleaguered history, but is notable for being Bruce Lee's first major film - the one which would bring him international acclaim and public attention. It has become the focus of intrigue because of its sought after selection of deleted scenes. Most of these are now available to the public, thanks to the film's numerous available versions, but others remain hidden away somewhere, though we know they exist because of obvious censorship edits, where frames have been removed without subtlety. It's clear that, on top of cutting a number of scenes for length purposes, censors went through and hacked out all the gore (as part of the "1972 Hong Kong Movie Crackdown"). There are 3 notable scenes that we know of in this regard: the scene where James Tien gets stabbed in the head, with blood gushing out, right before he dies' when Bruce Lee enters the red-lit ice room, finds the drugs, and his friends bodies, there was also a block of ice with severed body parts which was removed; and the now infamous lost "saw in the head" scene. There was also another whole sequence showing Bruce Lee going to the brothel for a second time that was completely edited out. Over at movie-censorship.com, they compare the 3 commonly available versions of the film: the original HLK release (which has the complete ending, gore intact), the German-dubbed UFA VHS release (the longest version with a bunch of slightly extended scenes), and the misnamed US version (the most censored). Each of the first two versions have something that the others don't, but none of the above releases contain the "saw in the head scene"- which is now considered "lost". The clip-in-question occurs in the scene which has Bruce Lee entering the ice shed where the drugs and frozen bodies of his friends are being stored. While inside, he is confronted by an armed gang of thugs on a mission to kill him. After dispatching of a few of them, Lee is backed into a corner. As he is backing up, he steps on a saw.... which he then uses when the thugs lunge at him, swinging it overhead. There's an unsubtle cut here, and the saw disappears. Apparently, though, Lee was supposed to have slammed it into one guy's skull, who dies screaming as blood spurts everywhere. This lost scene has become so famous that an entire mythology has even developed around its existence. Creepypasta has a bizarre post about this elusive moment that discusses claims made by an unnamed journalist who has apparently gone on record to say that he has a fully uncut version of the film. I've got to admit that the details are sketchy, but it adds to the fascination that surrounds the scene's mythology, nonetheless.